Her mom was Ann Richards, the silver-haired and sharp-tongued former governor of Texas, famous for a speech in 1988 that mocked the first George Bush as someone born “with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Cecile Richards has blonde hair and no need to stir things up. Her pot — the national presidency of Planned Parenthood — comes pre-stirred.

Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in America, about 330,000 per year, which puts it in the center of one of the nation’s most divisive culture wars.

There are people who wake up every day eager to shut the almost century-old organization down. Richards, 54, said she wakes up every day determined not to let that happen.

She travels the country regularly to rally support, pointing out that abortions are only a small part of what the organization does. She’ll be in San Diego today for a speech marking the local chapter’s 49th anniversary.

“We’ll be doing a little bit of celebrating,” she said in a phone interview earlier this week from Planned Parenthood’s New York headquarters.

And a little bit of reviewing what she calls “the challenging political climate” of a presidential election year in which women’s health-care issues are already playing a key role.

Every week seems to bring word of a new controversy for Planned Parenthood. A year ago, the federal government almost shut down over funding for the group. In January, the Susan G. Komen foundation decided to stop giving Planned Parenthood grants for breast-cancer screenings, then reversed course after a firestorm of criticism.

On Monday, a federal judge in Texas granted an injunction halting a ban there on funding for Planned Parenthood clinics. Tuesday, the stay was lifted. A half-dozen other states have pursued similar bans.

Planned Parenthood is so contentious that when Time magazine recently conducted online polling to help guide its selection of the world’s 100 Most Influential People, abortion opponents ran a campaign against Richards’ selection.

She made the list anyway, for the second year in a row.

The opposition doesn’t bother her, she said. “I don’t even pay attention. It just comes with the territory.” In some ways, she welcomes the heat: the Komen foundation flap brought a surge of new donations, volunteers and Facebook fans to Planned Parenthood.

But the group’s foes feel encouraged by recent events. “I think Planned Parenthood is more vulnerable than it has been in a long time,” said Marilyn Musgrave, former congresswoman and vice president of government affairs for the Susan B. Anthony List, a leading anti-abortion group. “They will continue to be the object of a great deal of scrutiny, and I don’t think they’ll be able to weather that.”

“Never-ending excitement” is what Richards calls all the controversy, using the same kind of folksy humor — and a little bit of the raspy drawl — that made her mother a popular figure, first in Texas and then nationwide. Ann Richards died at age 73 in 2006, the same year her daughter took over the reigns at Planned Parenthood.